Having pulled the trigger on Little Big Fat Parcells — a.k.a. Charlie Weis — Notre Dame is again on the prowl for a new head football coach for the fifth time in 13 years (don’t forget George O’Leary) after having had to conduct the same search just four times in the previous 45 years.
So the question begs, Can Notre Dame ever be Notre Dame again?
In the immortal words of Frank Burns, “Absotively.”
There is no question in my mind Notre Dame can and will be Notre Dame again if the Notre Dame adminstration finally comes through and doesn’t drop the ball for the sixth time (that includes firing Tyrone Willingham, not hiring him) since 1981 when they brought, God love him, poor Gerry Faust into be skewered.
Don’t forget, before the Irish hired Lou Holtz to succeed Faust, the same doubts about Notre Dame being able to be Notre Dame again were all over the place. We just didn’t have access to it 24/7 the way we do now. For that matter, the same questions and doubts persisted through the late 1950s and early ’60s until Ara Parseghian arrived.
Notre Dame, though, became Notre Dame again on both occasions, and it will again, because Notre Dame is a special place, and special things, most of which have nothing to do with sports, happen there. Notre Dame is a magic place because life there is based on and fueled by faith.
How will that matter when it comes to putting a winning football program on the field? Look, I haven’t rooted for Notre Dame since 1996, and I haven’t been to Notre Dame since 1989, but I have been there, and I know it will matter, because it has so many times before.
Scoff if you will, but if Notre Dame can finally hook up “right man” with “special place,” Notre Dame will be Notre Dame again.
Life of Brian
Perhaps the most interesting — and to me, hilarious — name to surface as a possible candidate for the Notre Dame job is that of former Ravens coach Brian Billick. I mean, how funny would that press conference be, not to mention the many more that would follow, if Notre Dame completely lost its marbles and hired Billick?
Well, don’t expect it to happen. No way is the Notre Dame administration ever going to allow “The Word of Life” mural located on Hesburgh Library to be referred to as “Touchdown Brian.”
Is this dubbed?
I could let this pass if they’d ever stop running the commercials on TV and radio, which, of course, they’re not going to do; but the entire tenor of those Troy Polamalu shampoo commercials is just very unsettling to me. Not because the Steelers safety is pushing shampoo, not because I believe he makes a fool of himself (and if I believed that, I certainly wouldn’t put it in writing beneath a picture of my yet-to-be-fractured face), not because I begrudge his being paid a lot of bucks for making a commercial. It’s just each time I see or hear those ads I still hear something I’m not expecting to hear.
It’s like when Grossberger sings in “Stir Crazy.” The sound doesn’t fit the picture, and you find yourself stopping whatever it is you’re doing to say, “ ... What?”
Life’s full of tradeoffs
What’s left to be said about Tiger Woods and his alleged peccadilloes that hasn’t already been said? Actually, more than likely a whole lot.
We talked on Sunday about this thing taking on directionless legs, and while those legs have been running in many different directions, they all come to a stop at the same place and at the feet of the same person, Tiger Woods. So why shouldn’t this all be news, and big news at that? Tiger has made some big, big money by controlling and cultivating his image through the media and through his sponsors all of these years, hasn’t he?
I would like to clarify my intent was not to target the media on Sunday when I said it was only just the beginning as far as having this story shoved down our throats. I don’t blame the media; I don’t even blame the John Waynes of Cyberspace. I blame Tiger Woods for ever letting this happen. No, I never thought of him as being perfect, but I did always think of him as being responsible.
If we were going to blame the media for anything here, it would be for raising our expectations too high to begin with. But you know what? We bought it. We were the buyers hook, line and sinker.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
Mike Burke - Sports
It’s not on the next coach, it’s on ND to find him
- Mike Burke - Sports
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Happy birthday, Brooks
Today is Brooks Robinson’s birthday. That’s right, good ol’ No. 5 is 75 years young, a term the great Chuck Thompson used all of the time, and a term that, even as a child, drove me up the wall when Chuck would use it to send birthday greetings to somebody who had just turned 100.
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How to e-mail (or phone) us your games
It will remain one of the great mysteries of my life (until I hit the lottery, that is) that seemingly grown men and women who have the mental capacity to sit at a computer, compose an e-mail and send it, cannot look at the little league/softball game reports that appear daily in the Times-News and duplicate the format we require for publication.
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The DH, the rook, ‘old school’ and the Codes
Baseball, to say the least, is presently buzzing in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, as the Orioles streaked to baseball’s best record through the first 29 games, while the Nationals seem to be every bit the contender they were said to have been, sitting atop the National League East as of yesterday.
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Take me out to the coin collector’s?
You know, you try to do the right things, but sometimes it just doesn't pay off in the end. And that's fine.
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We’d have taken Hines back, too
The Mega Millions madness is over for now, and that’s a good thing, because, frankly, I’m a little bit ashamed of all of you. Really. If you could have just seen yourselves and the way you’ve been acting these past 10 days, with nothing but greed soaring from your eyes, you’d be embarrassed, too. It’s as the great Charles E. Lattimer used to say (to me quite a bit, actually), “(Jiminy Crickets), look at yourself, son.”
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With no rule, there is no spirit to break
Three days after paying a king’s ransom for the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft and the right to select Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III (or, if Jim goes completely Irsay on us, Stanford quarterback Oliver Luck), the Washington Redskins were informed by Commissioner Vernon Wormer that they had violated double-secret probation, bringing to mind a piece of Redskins history that would produce one of the great lines in sports.
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No need to wonder what ACIT means to Karcher
This weekend’s 52nd Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament will mean a great many things to a great many people, from the players who will be competing, to their coaches, schools, family and friends, and to the fans who come to see some of the best high school basketball in the country.
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Shot clock should help loaded ACIT to light it up
The idea had been floating in Joe Carter’s thoughts since last year’s ACIT final between DeMatha and Benedictine, when DeMatha head coach Mike Jones, to help alleviate his team’s injury and foul issues, slowed the pace of the game in the first half of the title game his Stags would win, 53-43.
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Senior Day honor is the least Mosley deserves
COLLEGE PARK — Sean Mosley will be honored at Comcast Center today on Senior Day prior to Maryland’s game against Virginia, and it’s difficult to believe it’s been four years since we got our first glimpse of the 6-foot-4 guard out of Baltimore’s St. Frances Academy when he was the Most Outstanding Player in the 2008 Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament field.
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Somewhere over the rainbow starts here
During a break in the program Sunday night, former Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Bob Robertson sat at a table backstage sharing some stories from the day when he played some of the finest defensive first base and hit some of the longest home runs in the major leagues in helping the Bucs to the 1971 world championship.
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